Hello Darkness
by PallaPlease
Summary: [Post-YJ]  Married and with a baby on the way, it still seems a little much for Greta to expect a normal life.  [Complete?]


Hello Darkness  
by PallaPlease  
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Hello darkness, my old friend  
I've come to speak with you again...  
-Simon and Garfunkel, 'Hello Darkness'  
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Author's Notes: I don't really have much to say at this point, as I'm only beginning the story after all, but I do need to get a few things out of the way. I normally write Robin/Secret fanfiction (though the number of my Empress/Lobo fics is slowly but surely making some headway) and I'm hardly a fan of Spoiler by any means whatsoever (though she's a bit more tolerable as of late). However, this is probably only the second non-Robin related Secret romance I've written (the first being an unfinished Christmas fic, may it rest in peace), and it's an...odd pairing. To say the least. Lovely, no?  
Continuity: Following the events of Young Justice itself (*sobs*), but with alterations and several years in the future. I'll figure out what the alterations are and get back to you later. :]  
Disclaimer: According to the current copyright laws, no possible way for me to own any of the characters actually exists. So, basically, the entire DCU (which contains aforementioned characters) is being used against its will for the purpose of this fic, which is not netting me any money (profit or no) at all. Same pretty much applies to the song lyrics above and the excerpt from the dictionary below (yes, the dictionary).   
Warning: My characterization of Ray is probably way, way, way off the mark, but keep in mind that the only way I've been able to form any opinion of him is from Young Justice (and DC somehow screwed up my subscription, so I don't own issues 50 and 54). That and his itsy-bitsy guest spot in the DC One Million trade paperback, which means I'm flying off a limb here. I find myself doing that quite often.  
Status: This is meant to be the opening for a multi-chapter fanfic thingamajig, but it can stand on its own if the need presents itself (such as there being no desire for a continuation by the people). Of course, it depends on how people like this fic, natch. ;]  
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(2)light adj.   
1: having light : BRIGHT a ~ airy room   
2 a: not dark, intense, or swarthy in color or coloring: PALE   
2 b: of colors: medium in saturation and high in lightness ~ blue  
3: of coffee: served with cream or milk  
(Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1979)  
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The dream woke her from her sleep, shoving her forcibly into awareness of her surroundings as she breathed laboriously, a thin layer of sweat lining her skin. She had no memory of what the dream had involved or why it frightened her so - a night terror, her somewhat all-knowing husband would say thoughtfully before he managed to spill his coffee - and she felt no pressing need to delve deeper into her own psyche in quest of it. It was bad enough on its own that such a thing happened steadily once a month, usually when the soothing presence of her husband was gone for the duty she had once shared, and she let it rest. Feeling, out of habit, the other side of the bed, her hand glossed over a mildly rumpled blanket and she sighed at the world in general for being constantly overrun with some kind of menace. She reached with the same hand over his side of the bed for the lamp kept there, fumbling in the darkness and twisting the switch before she overbalanced on her waist.  
  
At least, she reflected as she unwound the sheets that had twined about her legs while she slept, it was too early in the pregnancy for abdominal swelling - thank God for the small things, especially on moonless nights such as this. If she had been, there was a rather hefty chance she never would have reached the light. "I really need to get a lamp," she murmured, scooting across the spiraling sheets and swinging her legs over the bed. She knew, though, as she wriggled her toes in the damp June weather pouring in through the open window along the wall, that the equilibrium in the room was a delicate thing, with him preferring brightness and she darkness. That was not to say he, at times, did not share a fondness for the dark - she flushed - and it was nights like this that she needed to know she had some light to turn to, with him off fighting aliens or whatever it was he needed to fight at two in the morning on Thursday.   
  
As soon as it was a reasonable hour, she really ought to call the company and inform them her husband was unfortunately sick with a nasty cold and wouldn't be able to do any work at home. If he argued, she would threaten him with the prospect of sleeping on the couch - she made a second note to thank Cassie for that wonderful advice - and he might grouch for an hour or so, but it would get him nowhere. She allowed herself a moment of triumphant smiling before she felt a sense of guilt, and revised her idea to cajoling him into staying home.   
  
"I'm not getting anywhere with this," she yawned, stretching her arms out and gathering up the sand colored robe cast lopsidedly over a worn armchair in the corner. Fitting it over her small frame, she tied the sash and, patting her mouth as another yawn parted her lips, shuffled to the door. "I'll," she began quietly to herself, opening the barrier and stepping silently through, "just make myself a bowl of ice cream," and a cup of grape juice with a side of Chinese rice, the peculiarities of the pregnant woman's diet piped up, "and then I'll go straight back to bed." The stairs veered toward her, a single staircase that went in a direct angle to the lower floor with little decorum or flair. She descended, keeping one hand firmly on the rail and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes in contradiction of her words, and paused on the last step, peering into the deep shadows of the ground floor.   
  
She could see a rainbow of grey tones where the brilliant white streetlight outside tossed its gleam through the two bay windows, creating an eerie amalgam of foreboding and beauty. What caused her to pause was the odd rumbling sound coming from the living room to her left, and she unconsciously gripped the banister with more force, probing with what little otherworldly perception had been left her. As far as she could sense, however much it was worth, there was nothing overwhelmingly dangerous in the darkened living room, but she lifted a muddied boot where it had been abandoned after a hiking trip near the staircase. Keeping it at her side, in a seemingly limp position, she crept over the polished hardwood in the entrance hall, into the living room, and, adopting a fight or flight pose, flicked the light switch on. A few precious seconds were lost as her eyes, forced to adapt to one too many different lights in the past seven minutes, protested the strain and attacked her mind with sunbursts.  
  
When she managed to regain composure and her vision, she was relieved and a bit upset to see her husband sprawled over the couch, his mouth hanging open in a manner he would deny vehemently later. The odd rumbling had been his snoring, something he rarely did, and she dropped the boot to the carpet of the living room with a curling smile, biting her tongue to keep from chuckling. At least three of the sunbursts, she could tell as they faded, had been from him, a sputtering reserve energy that had collapsed shortly after the light had been turned on. Whatever great evil had erupted certainly had taken a toll on her husband. She grabbed an afghan off a thin rocking chair and, stepping carefully to the couch, fixed it quickly over him, keeping it loose, but close enough to sufficiently swaddle him. Turning, she nearly tripped over the golden helm of his headgear and, as it was, barely avoided breaking her toes on it. "If you keep leaving this thing around the house," she muttered darkly to him, shooting a mock-glare at his sleeping form, "I'm going to throw it out and get Cassie to design you a new costume." Never mind the flammability of most cloths and whatnot when he wore them. She thought on the wonders of her husband's ability to attract fire and whether or not the vacuum cleaner would be able to survive any more volcanoes of ash being scattered over the floor, tiptoeing around the crumbling piles of ash in the suspicious shape of footprints leading to the couch.  
  
The kitchen greeted her with glittering fluorescence and the same remarkable trail of ashes, beginning at the back door, which was now undoubtedly the way he had pulled himself into the house. "Couldn't you have at least sprayed down with the hose?" she questioned the air with a note of exasperation creeping into her voice. A broom was fetched from a closet by the pantry and she managed to tidy the linoleum, in the very least, shoving the ashes into one unceremonious heap safely near the back door, resting the broom against the wall and clapping her hands together. She winced at the noise and, biting her lower lip and peering anxiously around the corner, felt a stab of relief to find him still asleep under the yellowed light of the living room; it would serve its purpose well enough until the sun came up.   
  
"Why did I come down here again?" she asked herself slowly, moving away from the corner and in the general direction of the refrigerator, knowing whatever it was it had been in the chilled recesses of the adjoined freezer. Waffles, fundraiser pizza, chocolate chip cookie dough, whatever it was Bart had made them for Christmas - no to everything, though the cookie dough sounded awful tempting. Dreamily, she popped the freezer door open, contemplating if she really needed the cookie dough, particularly since she didn't know if it was safe to eat or not, and ran her eyes down the length of the frosted interior. A dented tub of chocolate ice cream fixated prominently in her eyes and she gasped in childish remembrance, gleefully removing it from the grated shelf and skidding across the floor to the opposing counter. Dropping the tub quietly on the counter's glazed surface, she reached into the drying rack glued beside the sink and chose a plastic bowl the color of periwinkle blues. With the bowl in hand and the tub lid pried off after a brief struggle, she edged a drawer open carefully and snatched up a large spoon, closing it with great effort to ensure the silverware was not jarred into noisy reaction.   
  
Singing under her breath, she pinned the bowl down with her hand and, working her arm like a lever with her elbow jutting into the air, scraped the ice cream into a measly scoop. She eyed it unappreciatively, then shrugged, dumping the mutated scoop into her bowl and scratching up three more half scoops before deciding to stop. Wiggling the spoon into a deep gash in the confection, she tucked the lid in place over the tub, pressing down until it made a snapping noise. The lapels were fixed over the mouth, and she trotted back to the freezer, moving it onto the shelf she had taken it from and closing the door gently. She claimed the ice cream and wandered into the living room she had previously abandoned, shivering a little from the combination of her freezer activities and the buzzing air conditioner.   
  
The ice cream was temporarily abandoned on the floor near the foot of the couch, where his worn head lay in breezy slumber, and she worked one of the bay windows in the entrance hall open enough to welcome in the warm atmosphere, but not any crafty villains. Retreating to her ice cream and her husband, she plopped the first into her lap, the spoon slicing a bit of the first scoop off and into her mouth, and smiled lovingly at the second. Deciding he really was a sweetheart when he slept and was therefore unable to make any nerdy, yet cool quips, she pressed a chocolate kiss to his cheek and wriggled into a slouched position on the floor. He wrinkled his nose at the sticky cold of her coated lips and made a soft sigh in his sleep, one arm flopping in a very undignified manner over his chest.  
  
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It struck Greta that perhaps she had fallen asleep on the floor when her senses slowly returned to her, courtesy of obnoxiously bright sunshine pouring cheerfully through the bay window she had unlatched. She came to that conclusion as she had no recollection of climbing the stairs or cleaning the bowl after she finished her ice cream, but she was thrown for a loop at the cushioned warmth surrounding her and the softness of whatever she was asleep on. Unwillingly, she cracked her ice blue eyes open and came face to face with the grinning visage of her husband. Choking back a startled yelp, she settled for blinking owlishly and testing the softness under her body, coming to the realization that he must have woken and shifted her from the floor to the couch.  
  
He held a long finger to his mouth in an affectionate gesture for quiet, his green eyes glittering, and she blinked, again, hazily as he straightened up and strode away a little, as if pacing. She noted his switch into casual gear, a simple white shirt and wrinkled jeans, and his cautious parading around the trails of natural light. Of course, he wouldn't want to catch his clothes on fire, thereby adding to the ash on the - oh, she blinked, surprised for the third time, he seemed to have vacuumed the carpet, too, as the dark dust was gone. "I must've slept hard," she mused in a whisper, absently tugging the loose sleeve of her robe back over her shoulder and running a small hand through her shoulder cut locks.   
  
"Look, Ashton," he was saying, and she recognized the black rectangle he was holding to his ear in a purposefully inconspicuous manner, "that's great, but we need to focus on the gains from the second quarter and how they might balance out the losses from last year's fourth." He paused, crossing one muscled arm over his rib cage, and nodded to no one in particular, playing with his foot in the dust motes visible amidst a square of sunlight, keeping the fringe of his jeans out of the path of danger. "No, I'm not saying that won't work, just that we need to keep an eye on the finances. We need to know how this affects the company's profit margin."  
  
"How late were you out last night?" she demanded, narrowing her eyes in the manner all their close friends recognized as the warning sign to start fighting or fleeing for their lives. "I know for a fact you weren't in bed by midnight, because I was up then, and you certainly didn't look very good when I woke up at two!" He made a desperate jerking motion across his throat in a failed attempt to get her to lower her dangerous voice, and nearly turned to the wall vainly, freezing his limbs in a flash of insight. Running generally tended to aggravate her further. "And the only way you could be anywhere near healthy enough to finagle," she proceeded to scold, folding her arms primly over her chest and glowering, "is if you sunbathed naked from the moment the sun rose." Greta resolutely ignored the mental image that brought up, though her husband winced for fear the man known only as Ashton had overheard.  
  
"Okay, um, do whatever's working, and I'll call you later," he spoke quickly into the cell-phone, and then pressed the power button succinctly. Flashing his most winning smile, throwing in a sparkling teeth trick for the basic hell of it, he asked in his flattering voice, "Is something wrong, dearest wife whom I adore more than life itself?"  
  
"Don't be cute!" she protested, pulling her legs up defensively and wrapping her arms around the swell of her knees. "I hate it when you're cute and I'm trying to be mad at you," she added, her voice muffled as she ducked her face into the folds of her robe. "You make me feel all fuzzy inside, and then I forget all about lecturing you." In an afterthought, she made sure to clarify once more, lifting her head from her lap and pouting at him, "It's not fair."  
  
There was a streak of golden light, fringed by dark sunbursts that bubbled about it like heat waves, and he was beside her on the couch, wrapping his own arms around her knees and tugging them so her shins came to rest across his thighs. "Did you have another night terror?" he questioned gently, the red streaks in his strawberry blonde hair glistening in the refracted sunlight. He smoothed his palms out over her shins and rubbed reassuringly, taking care to keep constant eye contact and always keeping the smile on his face. At her reluctant nod, a glimmer of shame flickering over her features, he leaned forward and kissed her squarely on the mouth; she caught the faint, washed fragrance of chocolate from his cleaned cheek and smiled happily. "It's okay to have them," he continued in a soothing voice, knocking his forehead against hers and keeping it there.  
  
"But I don't understand why they always come when you're gone," she replied quietly, the smile dwindling into mystified sadness. He found he had no answer, and so he kissed her again, harder, until the traces of the fright fled at the onslaught of light.  
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Apologies and Blah: Can you guess who the guy was? Sure you can. My apologies for the lack of plot, the simplicity, and the sheer prologue-ness of it. I really do want to continue it...  
Author's Notes II: If this is to be a one-shot (yes, I know I'm pounding this into the ground, but I want to clarify here), then it can stand as an alternate pairing glimpse at the oddities of a superhero marriage, the fact that a bit of darkness always stays, and the fact that I really, really wanted to write a Ray/Secret fic. I have no idea why, so I'll chalk it up as one of those mysteries of life, right next to why it took seven seasons for Mulder and Scully to realize they liked each other in a non-platonic way.  
Feedback: I want it. I need it. I can't live without it. (Well...technically, I can, but my self worth will be crushed. So...please?) 


End file.
